what a woman who could have joined the D.A.R. has learned about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" by just paying attention and NOT keeping her mouth shut...

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Trombone Shorty: "You and I (Outta This Place)"

I don't really like to post music that isn't accompanied by a kick-ass video. But I picked up this cd the other day and the second cut almost made me pull the car over so I could focus on the words.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to get through to people -- in a classroom, around a table in a restaurant, chilling with students at the library, standing around at a cocktail reception for a bunch of middle class writers and their upper class aficinados -- I look at the expressions on the faces around me and wonder how I wound up in this place. I don't mean Louisiana. I think I've figured that out. I mean this place where I seem to be speaking some language I brought with me from some former life or other planet. The troubled blankness in my listeners' eyes, the confused tilt of their heads as they try to decipher what the hell I could possibly be talking about, the wary caution of their demeanor if they happen to be Black around White people and I start doin' my thing -- I look from face to face to face and check the body language, all the time my mouth goin' a mile a minute while the oxygen leaves the room.

Then I read a post like Lindy West's or run across a film clip of a young Black woman owning her space or I hear a song like this one and I know for sure that I'm just one of millions of men and women of all body types and skin tones and nationalities and sexual orientations and religions (or lack of religion) that threaten the system by our very existence whether anybody gets us or not. Yeah.

2 comments:

I feel this very same way as well. I made a comment today about legalizing marijuana can't be any worst than alcohol being that alcohol is much more toxic and detrimental to our society and before my night was over with my mom text me telling me to watch the things that I say on Facebook, as if what I'm saying isn't being talked about on the news or current events. It's really irritating that you try to get people to dig deeper and to not only see black and white areas. That there is a gray area because we are all individualistic. As a professor you taught me a lot and as a blogger you give me the nourishment that I need to grow even more.

ABOUT ME

I'm a writer, speaker, and sociologist who's made a life's work out of explaining exactly what I see happening in the world. Some people like it. Some people don't. But the ball is still the ball, no matter what kind of spin is put on it.